The typical English accent didn't develop until after the Revolutionary War, so Americans actually speak proper English. Here comes the science.

Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

Reading David McCulloughs 1776, I found myself wondering: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? If so, when did American accents diverge from British accents?

The answer surprised me.

Id always assumed that Americans used to have British accents, and that American accents diverged after the Revolutionary War, while British accents remained more or less the same.

Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and British accents hadnt yet diverged. Thats not too surprising.

Whats surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to todays American accents than to todays British accents. While both have changed over time, its actually British accents that have changed much more drastically since then.

First, lets be clear: the terms British accent and American accent are oversimplifications; there were, and still are, many constantly-evolving regional British and American accents. What many Americans think of as the British accent is the standardized Received Pronunciation, also known as BBC English.

The biggest difference between most American and most British accents is rhotacism. While most American accents are rhotic, the standard British accent is non-rhotic. (Rhotic speakers pronounce the R sound in the word hard. Non-rhotic speakers do not.)

So, what happened?

In 1776, both American accents and British accents were largely rhotic. It was around this time that non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper class. This prestige non-rhotic speech was standardized, and has been spreading in Britain ever since.

Most American accents, however, remained rhotic.

There are a few fascinating exceptions: New York and Boston accents became non-rhotic, perhaps because of the regions British connections in the post-Revolutionary War era. Irish and Scottish accents are still rhotic.

If youd like to learn more, this passage in The Cambridge History of the English Language is a good place to start.

One way to seek out the accents is by reading letters written by somewhat uneducated folks. They spell phonetically and sometimes you can follow the accent by reading the letters aloud. This came to me in the Confederate Museum in Richmond, VA several years ago. Soldier letters home actually spoke with southern accents. Fascinating!!

>> The southern accent seems to be merging with the midwestern accent in my area. <<

Sadly, the Southern Accent — or should one say, the Southern “Accents” in the plural — is/are dying. All across the Deep South, not to mention the Upper South, teenagers now ape the talk of Valley Girls and Britney Spears. In 75 years, the Southern accent will be heard only in old movies and recordings.

(This unfortunate development affects both the “drawl” variety and the “twang” variety of Southern speech, the latter being primarily from the Coastal Plain, lower Piedmont and “Delta” areas of the South, with the latter being primarily from the upper Piedmont and mountain areas.)

“Which one? If you put a Maine lobsterman in the same room with an Alabama sharecropper you’d have difficulty believing they are speaking the same language.”

One of my teammates was on a conference call yesterday with a lady from (it was obvious to me) Louisiana. They couldn’t understand her very well so they got me on the phone with her. Being raised down South myself I thought she had a very charming and sexy accent and had no difficulty understanding her.

"..just listen to it when someone says wash (as in Warshington) or squash (as in Squarsh)."

OK..so explain the southern "woah-man" vs women. It gets puzzlinger and puzzlinger. I'll go get my Saturday morning cup of java and leave you to solve the worlds mysteries. Life is so easy with a Muawiyah around. :)~

>> Listen to any streaming BBC service and marvel at the way different announcers talk <<

In the last decade or so, the BBC apparently has made a deliberate effort to have announcers with different regional accents — Scots, Irish, Canadian, Indo-Pak, West African, etc. But in earlier years, all announcers had to have virtually perfect RP.

(I don’t recall hearing an announcer or news reader, however, with an Australian accent. Guess that would be a bridge too far!)

You’ve hit upon one of my pet peeves, lol! The Brits refuse to pronounce ANYTHING in the language of origin. It all has to be translated back into Brit-speak. Thus, tacos becomes “tackos,” pasta becomes the dreaded “pass-ta,” the name Sophia is pronounced So-Fie-ya and on and on and on.

I recently had to correct a British actor friend of mine that the name Cesare is NOT pronounced Chez-AR-ray but
Chez-a-RAY, as it is pronounced in Italian. They are a strange, inward-looking breed.

I think the article is a bit simple—I am sure the Boston accent was different than the Virginian. I think the colonials had there own brand of English and it was nothing like what we speak today—same goes for the English. Its all just speculation.

My Brit in-laws are always amused when they hear people from their part of England, East Anglia, speak with what they call the the posh or received pronunciation accent. They wonder where they learned it. Some English accents are hard to understand. I have a very hard time understanding by bro-in-law from Norwich. However, I have no problem understanding my wife or her sisters who are also from Norwich. Sex and schooling play a part in understandable pronunciation. As in the States, women on average are easier to understand than men. That is when they speak of course.

71
posted on 10/09/2010 9:40:59 AM PDT
by driftless2
(For long-term happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)

Sadly, the Southern Accent  or should one say, the Southern Accents in the plural  is/are dying. All across the Deep South, not to mention the Upper South, teenagers now ape the talk of Valley Girls and Britney Spears. In 75 years, the Southern accent will be heard only in old movies and recordings.

I think it is a natural consequence of technology. Accents and whole languages develop over time inside isolated populations. With the development of radio, TV, internet, air travel, and highways, there is no one in the US isolated enough to form or maintain an accent. About the only accents possible are now from bilingual speakers such as from Mexico or India.

The typical English accent didn't develop until after the Revolutionary War, so Americans actually speak proper English.

Yankee twang: In remote corners of East Anglia today, country folk still speak in a harsh, high-pitched, nasal accent unkindly called the "Norfolk whine." This dialect is the survivor of a family of accents that were heard throughout the east of England in the seventeenth century, from the fens of east Lincolnshire to the coast of Kent.In the Puritan great migration, these English speech ways were carried to Massachusetts, where they mixed with one another and merged with other elements. During the seventeenth century they spread rapidly throughout New England, and became the basis of a new regional accent called the Yankee twang.(1)

Southern drawl: The speech ways of Virginia were not invented on America. They derived from a family of regional dialects that have been spoken throughout the sough and west of England during the seventeenth century. Virtually all peculiarities of grammar, syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation which have been noted as typical of Virginia were recorded in the English counties of Sussex, Surrey , Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Oxford, Gloucester, Warwick or Worcester.(1)

Shakespeare’s pronunciation would have been quite different from ours. At about the time of Shakespeare, the Great Vowel Shift occurred in a remarkably short time span (maybe 50 years) in which the pronunciation of vowels changed markedly. Hamlet’s soliliquy (sic) would have opened something like “Toe bay or not toe bay”.

The poet Alexander Pope famously wrote rhyming couplets, some of which no longer rhyme because the Great Vowel Shift was not quite over when he was doing whatever it is that poets do (or perhaps doe).

I occasionally present technical training on the Continent, where the Great Vowel Shift did not take place. I have to be careful when using vowels as mathematical symbols (for instance, I is understood to mean electric current). I say I and I think my students hear E.

I was born in Texas, but we left when I was a baby. After that, I never ventured below the Mason/Dixon line.

When we moved to Georgia in the mid-90’s, I was horrified to find that I couldn’t understand *anybody*. For the first two weeks, my mom took on the role of translator as I tried to get our electricity turned on, phone hooked up, garbage collected, etc.

It only took me a couple of months to get the hang of it, now I can barely hear a difference. Weirdly, I occasionally slip and let loose a Southern accent myself. Without even realizing it, I was involved with “language immersion”.

81
posted on 10/09/2010 9:53:28 AM PDT
by Marie
(Obama seems to think that Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since Camp David, not King David)

I pronounce it in the good ole American way - Julius Caesar. Not with a hard C. But like most Americans I tend to pronounce foreign words as they are said in the language of origin, although I tend not to use Latin pronunciation.

The problem in all “proper” English definitions is the “useage” in dictionaries. It’s like people using the word
“floundering” when they mean “foundering” Because it’s used it’s there- due to social purists in the dictionary world. Doesn’t mean it’s very intelligent per se, just commonly used. Ebonics unfortunately could become “useage”
and trash talk accepted. I regard all of this like entering a foreign country.

Adding my two cents ... something I find annoying is listening to these cutesy reporterette types on TV with their modified ‘valley girl’ speak. Must be something they work on at journalism school ... they all sound alike.

American actors now do brilliant British accents; just check out all the David Hare plays that come to B’way with American actors playing Brits. The training for accents in both the USA and Great Britain has improved drastically over the last few decades. We’ve come a long way, baby since the days of Dick Van Dyke (Mary Poppins) and Laurence Olivier’s awful American accents!

Unfortunately, in my past actor days I was truly terrible at accents. No ear.

Weirdly, I occasionally slip and let loose a Southern accent myself. I was born and raised in NYC, but lost my accent after moving away at 17. Years later my NY accent would pop up when I yelled at my kids. Weird is right.

If you don’t pronounce it ‘Yoolius Kayser’ you are guilty of perpetuating one of those English mispronunciations you are railing against.
The only way I can think of that this mispronounciation could have come about is if some English person who had never heard Latin being spoken just read the name as he thought it looked and passed this error on to others. The change in pronounciation could only have come about as a result of confusing the hard and the soft uses of the written letters ‘j’ and ‘c’...

The reference in the article about the upper classes adopting the non-rhotic speech makes me think of NPR. Why do they use so many people with “British” accents? Do they think it lends credence to their propaganda?

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